review of kitchen gadgets we didn't know we needed

I really like window shopping, especially in the home section of department stores.
I can spend all day there, looking at all the cookware, bakeware, accessories everything they have in that Aladdin's cave of kitchen treasures.

I have missed my wandering around a store, so I got online to get my fix of staring and lusting after Kitchen ware.  It gave me an idea for a blog piece...this head of mine needed a release as well..
Why not do a review of all the gadgets and accessories we never thought we needed!

Not one but two! egg boiling tongs! If you cant read the description - you use these tongs and leave them in the water when boiling eggs, and you can use the same tongs to take the eggs out.  How brilliant.. one wonders if $31 is a decent price to pay and would I miss this lovely gadget... or I could use a spoon to take the eggs out, and let them boil away on their own... hmmm

A Yolk Catcher... $28 for something to catch a yolk.  I guess if you had no cooking experience and didnt know how to break eggs, this would be useful.. No really I can see the use...... well not really..

A tool to cut avocados.... i know who the tool really is

A parmesan grater.... seriously one grater just for the hard cheese.. really.. REALLY.. cant just use the other grater you have.. have to get one grater just for the parmesan cheese... REALLY

Everyone has a an empty jam jar at home, everyone.  but I guess there will be people out there who would pay for a glorified jar to shake your dressing in...and no the measurements on the jar do not make a bloody  difference

a chopper for fruit and vegetables... what ever happened to a knife and and a chopping board. whisk insert whisks cream and salad dressings... No you still dont need this. Just no.

Vegetable ricer... my head hurts..
another little bit of fluff to put in the back of the cupboard after using it once.
Use your damn food processor like everyone else..

shopping reviews done....
I wonder if the store will find these reviews helpful for their customers.....

its all going to pot

I like routines

I like having things planned out and having a schedule for the day

We started the work from home thing on the 20th of March.... one would think that it would be easy for me, this work from home thing as I only work a 3 day week.  what I did on the 4 days of the week varied from errands, doing stuff for mum, visiting mum, movies, sometimes drinks with friends (although drinks with friends seemed to have slowed down alot), but you get the drift, I was out and about.

I also hurt my back around the same time I started working from home, which hampered my movements quite drastically.  I stopped doing things, I stopped going for my 5k walks.  and I started eating all the wrong things again.

Before all this happened I had put myself on a low fodmap diet, eating foods that would not give me bloating and gas and It was working!  Then I hurt my back and everything went to pot.

I made cookies with butter and I KNOW dairy fucks me up... I made a cheese bake, I ate and ate...

I am now a very pale and round version of me.. the picture in the last post of me was taken in december 2019.  my face now is more round and pink! 

I have stopped showering in the morning, I sit in my pyjamas all day until the late evening when I shower and change into another set of pyjamas. I sit on the sofa and get through what little work there is to do, the rest of the time its watching TV or scrolling through social media to find out the latest on Covid-19.  I still get up to do laundry and cook simple meals for myself but that isnt enough to keep me occupied.

I need projects to keep me occupied.  I know there are things to do around the house but my back is limiting my actions and I dont want to hurt my back again as my chiropractor is considered non essential and has had to shut down for the month.

sigh.. its all going to pot!  Enjoy Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard saying it - Its all gone to pot

the mystery of the disappearing woman

One morning on the way to work, I actually got a seat on the train.. this was way before any social distancing became the norm

Getting a seat on a crowded train at peak hour is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow.

As I moved to the seat, usually the end one which is the seat for the old, pregnant or people with kids, a youngish looking man also headed to the seat but when he saw me he backed off and let me have the seat.

I don’t know how I feel about that… on one hand I am delighted that the youngish man let a woman have the seat but then I also questioned if I was looking my age? Vanity hit me like a ton of bricks!

thats me.. with my silver streaks

I stopped colouring my hair after my older son got married in Aug 2016, while the grey is not so pronounced, it’s there, I have flecks of silver hair running through my mane.

I struggle with knowing I am getting old.  The men I used to look at and ogle are now older, like me,  and there are a lot of men my age that have not aged well… so I look at the younger men for my fix of a visual feast, an older woman looking and appreciating young virile men might be construed as distasteful.

Older men tend to date much younger women, and older women are still unsure about dating younger men as sexism and ageism is more pronounced towards the older women.  While I want to look my age and be proud of the life I have lived, 

I fear I will be pushed aside and made to feel that my life experiences are not worth the time or trouble… 

it’s not just in the dating world, it’s at work, in public, and yes even with family.  

The odds of me getting paid for my experience and worth or getting a date with a decent man my own age is pretty limited. I still will not bow to pressure and colour my hair though.

With the odds stacked against us, no wonder so many of us are diagnosed with anxiety, depression and suicide rates are up amongst the older generation. (see here for an article in 2018)

I already am a minority in my own country, and a minority within a minority (north Indian Sikh within the Indian diaspora in Singapore), now with ageism and sexism thrown into the equation, I guess my odds just got a whole lot worse.  Am I  disappearing and becoming invisible....

circuit breaker mode

Yep Circuit breaker... thats what the powers that be have called this.. this lockdown, this order to stay home

from today only essential services are allowed to be open.  markets, supermarkets, hairdressers, barbers, banks, petrol stations, restaurants and food centres for delivery only.

and in Singapore we also have the Qing Ming festival, which is a chinese festival  -one I am not too sure about so I wont comment on that but this is what Wiki says - The Qing Ming Festival

I do know that this festival has joss paper burning as one part of it and even with this 'shutdown' Singapore is experiencing, this festival is still ongoing and people are doing their burning in designated areas in housing estates.

This morning i heard a commotion outside my kitchen window, i live 13 floors up in the air but I still heard this man shouting.  He didnt seem very happy, he seemed to be with his family, burning Joss paper.  He also was tossing paper boxes into the fire. 

My chiropractor is considered non essential just like physiotherapists  and due to the close contact a chiropractor has with the patient, i can understand why this would be considered a little dangerous, but non essential?

the Qing Ming festival is considered essential, fine to go ahead  and set up areas where people will come together to burn joss paper but people like me who depend on chiropractors to be able to function normally cant access that service. 

so yes I am a little bitter about a festival about praying to dead ancestors is deemed essential